Here’s how Ukraine was being reported by the West before the war.
Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
These stories of Ukraine’s dark nationalism aren’t coming out of Moscow; they’re being filed by Western media, including US-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE); Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and watchdogs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House, which issued a joint report warning that Kiev is losing the monopoly on the use of force in the country as far-right gangs operate with impunity.
Five years after Maidan, the beacon of democracy is looking more like a torchlight march. A neo-Nazi battalion in the heart of Europe
If you whitewash NAZI POGROMS just because you want to beat Russia, fuck you. Siding with far-right fascists to defeat far-right fascists doesn’t make you the good guy. There is no lesser of two evils here.
If you dismiss any criticism of Ukraine as Russian propaganda, you might want to ask why the rest of the world, including the West, was concerned about Nazism in the area and then suddenly changed their tune only after the war started.
We should be getting both sides into peace negotiations, not prolonging the bloodshed and providing Nazis with illegal cluster bombs
I often see criticism of Ukraine lumped in with Russian justifications for invasion, in which case, the war is also warping your views.
The US got heat from other supporters of Ukraine for that even. Russia is also using them. Further cause to support peace negotiations.
Especially because the actual reason Russia invaded wasn’t over any concern about ethnic Russians in Ukraine (that’s literally one of the oldest bullshit excuses for war) was to prevent NATO from being on it’s borders, and now Finland and Sweden have joined, so Russia’s already lost the geopolitical battle. All they’re fighting for now is dirt.
I often see libs consider the most luke warm criticism of Ukraine or NATO as being support for Russia. It sucks.
Russia portrays its “military operation” as being because of common and well known issues that the left has with NATO, but it was their invasion that tipped public opinion in Finland and Sweden to apply to join, so Russia has already lost in that respect.
oh yeah, so called “public opinion” is definitely crucial to liberal democracy and not just easily shaped by bourgeois media when class interests dictate. great analysis, very map-coloring brain. meanwhile you ignore things like Zelensky talking about leaving the Budapest memorandum or the imminent large-scale offensive against DPR and LPR just prior to the invasion
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/02/the-buildup-to-war-in-ukraine-february-13-2022.html series continues until Feb 22
Pfft, as if. Oh the Europeans always do that. They’ll whine on TV about how this War is unfair, or that french colony should be freed. Then they’ll send volunteers to help with Iraq and Afghanistan. They are just as bloodthirsty, but they are cowards about it.
The Baltics have been in NATO since 2004, so Russia already had NATO on its border. Plus Poland on Belarus’s border. It’s not about having NATO on their border in general, it’s about having NATO in Ukraine specifically. Finland and Sweden joining means nothing.
But Ukrainian bombing of the Donbass absolutely was a factor as well. For 8 years Russia tried the diplomatic route to get them to stop, but despite signing agreements, Ukraine just ignored them and kept bombing anyway.
They’re only upset about the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO because of the fact that the Baltics were able to join. If Putin had amassed enough political capital and military strength earlier, they probably would have intervened militarily there before they could join too.
Nothing is so one-sided. It’s not like portions of Ukraine still under Ukrainian control and not separatist control weren’t also getting bombed in turn. You could see it from Google Maps back in like, 2018. It’s not like the damage magically ended at the trenches and was only on the side controlled by the separatists.
I mean if you’re getting shelled from enemy territory then the way you stop it is by shooting at the enemy artillery in enemy territory. Do you not support the right of Ukrainians in Donbas to defend themselves?
Do you not support the rest of Ukraine’s? And what about all the people in the Donbass that relocated to parts of Ukraine still under control of Kyiv? After the separatists took power there many people went to western Ukraine. Do those people not have a right to one day return to their homes?
Ukraine could have stopped their war against Donbas at any time. In fact they were legally obligated to according to the Minsk agreements that they signed. Ukraine had no legal or moral right to continue attacking Donbas after they signed a ceasefire.
Not a lot of people went to western Ukraine. Most people went to either Russia or other parts of eastern Ukraine. Western Ukraine is pretty far away from the conflict.
Do you think only Ukraine violated the agreement? Why is on them to honor it when the rebels weren’t?
People in the political minority in Eastern Ukraine went to Western Ukraine so they’d be in the majority, in the period between the ouster of the Kremlin-prefered leadership in Kyiv and the rebels getting organized. This was in the news back in like 2014, so it’s likely been buried in the more prevalent discussions about the Minsk agreements and the subsequent invasion of the wider country.
With all ceasefires, both sides claim that the other violated it. I have no reason to give the Donbas separatists the benefit of the doubt anymore than I do Ukraine. It’s not like either side is openly communist, Russia isn’t some left wing workers state anymore, it’s not like they’re trying to reverse the economic and political changes of 1991, only the borders.
For a self-styled Marxist, you don’t seem to appreciate the idea of states being historically progressive or reactionary beyond “is it socialist or not?” Starting in 2014, Ukraine started moving in the direction of ethnonationalist policy. Palestine isn’t socialist, but I think socialists usually understand that if they are going to give one side benefit of the doubt, it’s the insurgency trying to resist the supremacist military trying to dominate them.
They were fighting against the wholesome Banderite Nazi government of Ukraine. There is no sympathy for them.
The baltic route to invading Russia is a lot more difficult than the Ukrainian route. Ukraine was always the “red line” for them because of the topography, and the closeness to moscow. Also they were pissed when the baltics joined. The brits declassified that informal promises were made to Gorbachev (ugh…) to not expand NATO eastward in March 1991 if he dissolved the USSR. Of course these informal promises weren’t in writing and were never kept. the USA denied they were ever made, but luckily the brits declassified
Really no one should be shocked that an informal promise wasn’t honored. If a legally binding treaty can still be ignored by a sovereign power, informal promises are always worthless and no one should be pointing to them and going “but they promised!”
Yes. Gorbachev was a clown who got clowned upon. Still, I think it’s worth mentioning, because it reveals that the West was always willing to be deceptive about NATO expansion, and what the role of NATO actually is (i.e. it is not a “defensive” alliance but a reactionary alliance of imperial core countries to protect the superprofits afforded by imperialism and neocolonialism)
I mean, it is literally a defensive alliance if only because if one country is attacked, the others are legally obliged to treat it as an attack on them. It is then also an alliance of Imperial core countries (it was after all, founded in response to the Warsaw Pact).
It is indeed worth mentioning, but I don’t think it’s worth framing it as some sort of public promise that was walked back.
It was NOT founded in response to the Warsaw pact. NATO was formed in 1949. The Warsaw Pact was founded in 1955. The Warsaw pact was founded in response to NATO. NATO was building up West Germany economically less than 10 years after the fucking holocaust. The Soviet Union tried to join NATO in 1954 and was told “no, you aren’t democratic enough.” But they had no problem letting West Germany in while integrating “former” nazis like Adolf Heusinger into their command structure.
less than a third of NATO countries were admitted to NATO through some kind of democratic referendum. It was almost always the unilateral decision of the given country’s bourgeois class, rather than something the people themselves were consulted on. In the cases where democratic referendums were held, it was often in countries that had just been balkanized (former Yugoslav countries, for example), or countries that were just at the outskirts of NATO and were therefore pressured geopolitically into choosing whose “sphere of influence” they were under: Russian federation, or USA. When a nation is compelled under duress to pick sides like that, and a class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the one that usually ends up making the decisions, I doubt the alliance can reasonably be called “defensive.” Its borders keep expanding to encircle and balkanize nations whose main “crime” was being socialist Once Upon A Time. NATO expansion is marching us towards WW3. It is an expansionist and aggressive alliance that merely uses Article 5 to appear defensive and Democratic, while trying its hardest to constantly provoke wars and lay claim to natural resources.
Is the following something a “defensive” alliance does?
Ah yes, I’m sure that’s why
sent exactly 1,488 panzer tanks to 
Must just be a coincidence that white supremacists and nazis all love those numbers
14 types of one tank and then 88 types of another tank
I don’t think Germany’s malfunctioning military even has 1488 ready to deploy tanks in total lol
OK that sounds way more reasonable than what I said but I’m just gonna leave what I said because the underlying point still stands
all I was referring to was the fact that they all literally criticized the move, in typical diplomatic hand-wringing ways. Say anything about other countries’ military aid, it doesn’t change that they still issued statements, it just makes them hypocrites (big shock).
Also, they sent 14 of one kind of tank and 88 Panzers, Germany doesn’t even have a thousand tanks in its possession.
oil and wheat are just “dirt”? millions of civilians who were bombed by the Ukrainian government for the past decade are “dirt”? even if it is just “dirt”, its dirt that provides the perfect launching ground for a land invasion of Russia. NATO is the Nazi Arming Terrorist Organization and anyone fighting against them will have critical support from most of the world (no, the west is not all that exists; most of the world is or has been colonized by the west)
deleted by creator
show me where Russians attacked Ukrainian civilians from 2015-2021 (dont show me Russia funding separatists as evidence, the DPR and LPR have the right to defend their right to self determination). you can say “it was a war” all you want, it doesnt change the fact that there was a ceasefire agreement that was consistently violated by Ukraine.
what do you think Russian leadership wanted? bc it looks like the DPR and LPR, as well as most of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, are occupied by Russia. and Zelenskyyy was supposed to be the “peace and neutrality” candidate, yet he was working towards joining NATO. the Ukrainians west of the Dnieper were already primed to join NATO, the war didnt change anything.
and what are those bs identity politics abt “Ukrainian national identity”? lets focus on material reality, not these flimsy ideas invented to justify imperialism and ur guesses on what Putin thinks abt them
yummy western propaganda!!
no, Ukraine and the west have empowered (and armed) nazis for 90 years! and now you rely more on western propaganda and all their unfounded claims of atrocities. let’s focus on what we have proof for— the Ukrainian use of cluster munitions against civilians in the Donbas, Ukrainian pogroms and segregation against the Roma people, and state suppression of the Russian language. and what is wrong with you saying “pffft” regarding genocidal actions?
lol you are the one isolated from reality. the world sees what the west is blind to. when the fighting is over and Russia still governs 4 previously Ukrainian oblasts, come here again and say the invasion is “strategically idiotic”, it will be funnier then.
this IS a war against NATO. and it was started by NATO. and it can be ended by NATO right now— Russia is open to peace negotiations
this is a ridiculous double standard. if we’re going to talk about NATO pulling the strings of Ukraine, we don’t get to pretend the separatists were authentic grassroots movements unaffected by Russian military involvement in their affairs. and whether or not you ‘count’ the separatists as russian-proxy, they did kill civilians. the ceasefire & it’s breaking are still pertinent details but it’s wrong to characterize the warfare as one-sided
this is true and obvious, it’s a much larger and more intense war. western propaganda does emphasis on russia’s crimes, denies ukraines, & spins tales of russia’s ‘genocidal’ intentions, but the wide scale suffering & thousands of civilian deaths are real. it’s why the war needs to end as quickly as possible.
im not denying separatists were influenced by Russia, but sending arms to a separatist group is nothing compared to directly attacking civilian centers. is a third party sending weapons to Hamas comparable to the actions of Israel? should we condemn those who send weapons to Houthi rebels?
a subjective assessment is “true and obvious”? no western spin will change the fact that this war is one of western expansion and the people of the Donbas were facing ethnic cleansing from Ukraine. the war could end today if Ukraine and NATO were willing to negotiate reasonably.
ah sorry i had no idea i have to spell out exact numbers of combatants, casualties, displaced persons, and length/area of combat zones or it’s “subjective”. don’t be obtuse, this isn’t western spin to say more people are getting hurt in the expanded war than were in the Donbass.
when the separatists you arm & operate your military alongside hit a civilian target with those weapons you do have a measure of culpability. just like NATO has responsibility for the weapons they’ve given ukriane.
A measure of culpability, as compared to the bad faith characterization of full-scale offensive war that lib is making.
its not abt numbers. on one hand is the ethnic cleansing of civilians during an agreed upon ceasefire, on the other is a war between two modern armies. trying to compare the two is obtuse.
this is not materialist. numbers & scale matters. a murder is not the same as a mass murder. a different legal framework doesn’t magically make a many times increase in human suffering and death irrelevant and incomparable to the smaller-scale violence earlier in the same conflict.
we’re leftists, right? we agree that social murder is an aspect of capitalist society, but the capitalist legal system does not recognize this. we’re capable of separating material effects of policy from their legal definitions. i’d urge you to focus less on the legal character of the war and more on material effects on people. legalism is a tool the ruling class uses that obscures & excuses human suffering in our society. the civilians in the donbass were excused by the ukrainians with legal definitions of traitors or dissidents, as russians who were not part of the state & not deserving protections. i don’t accept that and i won’t accept fictions about scopes of operation and who is technically aggressing whom, when a kid gets their leg blown off by a mine that is a life permanently changed or erased whichever legalese you slap on it.
You’ve got it backwards. The far right elements were deliberately sowed to induce instability on Russia’s borders, and has been so since before and after the Cold War.
Check out Operation Bloodstone. Check out Operation AERODYNAMIC. Check out Prolog. These are all declassified information detailing their activities in Ukraine and the role in destabilizing Russia both externally and internally.
The reason is quite simple actually: Russia’s increasingly close relationship with the EU (especially Germany) as a raw material supplier will eventually pull the EU out of the US sphere. Energy sovereignty has always been a key issue for Europe. When Saddam tried to sell oil in euro, Iraq was immediately invaded. Then Russia began to sell gas in euro, setting the stage for Europe to gain its energy sovereignty.
Thus, Maidan had to happen. The war in Ukraine has to happen. Nordstream bombing had to happen. All to prevent the vassal states from defecting and undermining US hegemony in the region.
No matter who is in charge in Russia, a left wing government or a right wing government, they all have to face the same problem. Putin tried to appease to the West for nearly a decade, only to see the US keep sending military arms to Ukraine openly. If he had been an even bigger idiot he might even wait until Ukraine to be fully armed by NATO and by then it would have been a far worse humanitarian crisis. And then you’d be calling him an idiot for trying to appease the West and ignoring the military buildup in Ukraine.